News Clips 08/29/2013

FAMU community celebrates historic day

A small group gathered at Florida A&M University Wednesday morning to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington in concert with the thousands gathering at the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Connie Evans was at the National Mall when she was just 16. Now 50 years later she stood in front of the Eternal Flame at FAMU encouraging students to continue to fight for equality.

“The work was done by college students,” Evans, whose late husband Charles was a professor at FAMU and also attended the March on Washington, said. “So I urge all college students, please continue; work is still to be done.”

The quad at FAMU had a feel of the 1963 demonstration as Assistant Director of University Advancement and Alumni Affairs James Moran read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have Dream” speech from the second story balcony of Lee Hall.

FAMU Student Body President Anthony Siders said coming together years later to celebrate the historic moment “gave reverence to a march that enabled us to run and closed an open wound of democracy.”